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Low-dose radiation: guilty until proven innocent?

by Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | June 30, 2015
CT Rad Oncology Risk Management X-Ray
At least since the amputations and subsequent death of Thomas Edison's X-ray assistant, Clarence Madison Dally, there has been one thing people experimenting with radiation have generally understood: it's dangerous.

And while nobody with any claim to medical credibility would dispute that, there remains some speculation about the link between the development of cancer and exposure to lower doses of radiation.

A new article in the journal Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment posits that the current body of evidence supporting the connection between low-dose exposure and cancer is based on bad science.

"No data have ever unequivocally demonstrated the induction of cancer following exposure to low doses and dose rates," said Dr. James Welsh, lead author and Loyola University Medical Center radiation oncologist, in a statement.

According to Welsh and his colleagues, the current body of evidence is based on a model called linear no-threshold (LNT) in which the well-established cancer-causing effects of high doses of radiation are simply extrapolated in a straight line down to low doses.

The researchers said there is compelling evidence that radiation in low doses is something that the human body has evolved to process and repair damage from.

"The mutation rate caused by low-dose background radiation in the environment is 2.5 million times lower than the rate of spontaneous mutations in the body. So even if the LNT model were true, the small increase in mutations caused by low-dose radiation from medical imaging would be unlikely to overwhelm the body's defenses," wrote the authors.

Presenting their position in a paper entitled "Does imaging technology cause cancer? Debunking the linear no-threshold model of radiation carcinogenesis," Welsh and his team frame their argument against allowing dose concerns to factor into the decision to undergo potentially revealing imaging exams.

While the researchers do not claim that low doses of radiation are safe, they do take the position that the current body of evidence does an inadequate job of proving that it isn't.

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